My last laugh out loud? From the riddle thread, “A nun in a blender.” Thanks, I needed that today!

I can understand that, Maggie. My teenage boyfriend and I reconnected almost 50 years later. I adore him, but from a distance. I know I wouldn’t like living with him. This way, for both of us, it’s an email fantasy. I’m divorced once, from a very nice man. I just prefer to be single.

First kiss: I was 12, David was 11, we were classmates. I didn’t imagine that lips touching would feel any different from lips on cheeck, but wow. I googled him last year, unsuccessfully.

Candice, thanks for helping refresh my pleasure in WOW. That was brilliant, elegant and accurate!

Ena… of course… “The Apartment.” Shirley Maclaine saying (something like) “When you’re in love with a married man, don’t wear mascara.” That was really good advice. I… um… don’t wear mascara.

Wow, Mary Sue, I didn’t know anyone else loved “A Man and a Woman” as much as I do. Sad movie to live in, but I suppose many of us do. Somehow we make up for the loss of the loves of our lives. Along the same lines, it would be sadly romantic to live in Doctor Zhivago. Most days now I seem to be living in Groundhog Day.

Carol and Rachel, I had that experience also. It was my mother who kept my sister and me separated and in competition and resenting each other. She did it deliberately (and very well), to keep our attention focused on her. These patterns are hard to break. My sister and I got to be friends in the last year or two of her life… and hey, guess what, I liked her! By then, though, she’d trained her kids to avoid and resent me, and that’s proven too hard to undo.

Doll Lady and Renata, very well said, thank you. I find the waste of money and energy appalling. I hope she doesn’t lose us the election. I wish I weren’t this discouraged.

Ick. I paused Pandora for this?

My favorite possession? My immediate reaction didn’t distinguish between favorite and necessary. My computer is my connection with my world. What I’m enjoying most is my new rainbow quilt.

Great article, Judy! Most of us have been there, perseverating beyond any hope of satisfaction. This time the cost is too high to indulge a public figure’s temporary loss of logic. Please let go, Hillary.

Would I rather have more time or more money? I have enough of both now. More money might be helpful, but there’s not much I’m longing to do with it. I’ve always done what I wanted. Now my health is bad, so it’s a good thing I don’t have “if only”s.

Some of my life-changing books: Peony by Pearl Buck, Colline by Jean Giono, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry, Moise by Victor Hugo (long poem), Feminine Mystique by Friedan, Man’s Search For Meaning by Frankl….

Right, Carol, some people shouldn’t have children. But they did, and here we are. I decided not to have children myself, because I’m not sure I know everything that would need to be rooted out of me before it harmed my kids. (I do have some surrogate kids. There’s nurturing in me.) My mother stayed at home because my father didn’t allow her to work. Outside, he meant. He was out in the world, and she was mostly his subject. So in a practical sense, he knew more. Who knew best? I don’t know. They were both very bright and pragmatic.

Well, yes, generally I think women are harder on each other than we are on men. I think the process is the same whether it’s work or not-work, just the content that’s different. Give it another century or so, and remember how much worse it was a century or so ago. I think it’s a question of self-confidence - that’s why the setting doesn’t matter. The provocation is internal. The more self-confident we are, the less we need to put down people who are similar to us - other women.